Vance Packard and American Social Criticism

Vance Packard’s bestselling books — Hidden Persuaders (1957), Status Seekers (1959), and Waste Makers (1960) — taught the generation that came of age in the late 1950s and early 1960s about the dangers posed by advertising, social climbing, and planned obsolescence. Like Betty Friedan and William H. Whyte, Jr., Packard (1914– ) was a journalist who played an important role in the nation’s transition from the largely complacent 1950s to the tumultuous 1960s. He was also one of the first soci...